Jason Houston’s 6th blog post from Africa- and 2nd post from Terence Vel’s Pride campaign in the Seychelles.
Today we spent most of the day on a tour around La Digue (on foot as there are only a few cars, all for commercial use, on the island) looking for the Seychelles Paradise Flycatcher and its habitat and the various threats facing their survival. These birds live almost exclusively in the low-land plateau, which is also where almost all the people on the island live. The birds are territorial, requiring about one hectare of mixed woodland per breeding pair, and the island is in a housing boom. The set up is obvious. It’s an island (and a small one at that) and there’s simply not enough space for development to continue and at the same time for the Flycatchers’ population to continue to grow. The Flycatcher population is currently at its carrying capacity—literally all of the viable territories are full—and any development necessarily reduces those viable territories by one lot at a time.
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Seychelles Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone corvine)
If space was not limiting, a number of other variables might come into play: Introduced species preying on them, like cats, rats, and barn owls (introduced to control rats), human/bird conflicts like kids with slingshots or nests being built too close to roads that bisect territory, etc. But space is limiting and so the threats are simple and (1) direct and immediate (the further reduction of habitat) or (2) somewhere in the future but imminent (a natural disaster like fire or tsunami that could wipe out the entire population in a single event).
As a result, Terence’s Pride campaign here on La Digue is focused on two distinct goals. The first is about translocation for securing the species for the long-term. With cooperation from scientists at his own Nature Seychelles and partners like biologist Rachel Bristol working with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent in the U.K., the plan is to relocate breeding pairs to a nearby island to establish a second viable population. As I mentioned on the first day, the main concern with regards to translocation is to convince the people that they are not losing the status of having a ‘unique endemic species’ but are securing the future of their bird. In a few days we’ll sit in on one of the meetings with the community where they try and help the community come to some consensus on this point. Most of the community has come around to accepting this plan, but it’s still not for certain that it will be approved.
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Habitat loss from human development
The second goal is to affect the attitudes and behavior of the Diguois to reduce the threats here on La Digue. Specifically, Terence is trying to encourage less habitat destruction, restoration of damaged habitat, and preservation of more land as natural habitat. This is a big challenge. Development for housing and tourism is a primary income source for the island (and even a national mandate for all of the Seychelles). Some creative ideas for trying to combine all these agendas into one, collaborative approach include stepping up ecotourism (which increases the measurable value of the wildlife to offset against other valuations of tourism) and encouraging natural gardens (which could be set up to restore viable habitat for the various species used to living in the plateau). It’s less that people don’t care—most do—it’s more that there are just no simple solutions here.
It’s not clear how this will work out. It’s not clear what really can be done if people are pitted against birds (and if that’s even possible to avoid). But this will be an important experiment and learning experience for how to deal with these common issues in endangered species conservation: you have one of the world’s most beautiful places to visit or live, trying to preserve the environmental needs of some of the world’s rarest animals, in the context of completely finite (and exhausted?) resources. Not to be grandiose, but I believe it’s true: How projects like this work out will be indicators for what we can expect conservation to look more and more like in the future as resources become more limited, populations become larger, and more and more species are added to the critically endangered list.
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